Final answer:
The correct answer is option A. A rectangular prism has 12 edges and 8 vertices, which corresponds to option A (8, 12). This is determined by counting the unique edges and vertices of the shape's 6 rectangular faces.
Step-by-step explanation:
To determine the number of edges and vertices in a rectangular prism, we can visualize or draw a diagram of this 3D shape. A rectangular prism is made up of 6 faces, with each face being a rectangle. It has 3 sets of parallel faces, and all angles between the faces are right angles.
When counting the vertices, we see that each of the 3 pairs of parallel faces meets at 4 corners, which gives us a total of 4 + 4 + 4 = 12 vertices. As for the edges, each face has 4 edges, and since opposite faces are equal and do not share edges, we have (4 edges per face × 3 faces)/2, as each edge is shared by two faces, leading to 6 unique edges that are doubled once. This gives us a total of 12 edges. So, a rectangular prism has 12 edges and 8 vertices.
Therefore, the correct option that represents the number of edges and vertices in a rectangular prism is option A (8, 12).